Main Street's Frog and Toad hops for audience

Kregg Alan Dailey, left, as Toad and Ilich Guardiola as Frog in Main Street Theater's presentation of A Year With Frog and Toad.

Kregg Alan Dailey, left, as Toad and Ilich Guardiola as Frog in Main Street Theater's presentation of A Year With Frog and Toad.

Photo: Meenu Bhardwaj, For The Houston Chronicle

Photo: Meenu Bhardwaj, For The Houston Chronicle

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Kregg Alan Dailey, left, as Toad and Ilich Guardiola as Frog in Main Street Theater's presentation of A Year With Frog and Toad.

Kregg Alan Dailey, left, as Toad and Ilich Guardiola as Frog in Main Street Theater's presentation of A Year With Frog and Toad.

Photo: Meenu Bhardwaj, For The Houston Chronicle

Main Street's Frog and Toad hops for audience

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Just like Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad "I Can Read" books, A Year With Frog and Toad is about friendship, warts and all.

When the musical inspired by Lobel's four award-winning Frog and Toad titles opened on Broadway in 2003, critics and the Tony nominating committee took notice.

A Year With Frog and Toad received nominations as best musical, best book for a musical and best original score. Hairspray swept those Tony categories.

While no one would recommend Hairspray for the average preschooler, all ages can enjoy Main Street Theater's young-audiences version of A Year With Frog and Toad, which plays through Dec. 16 on MST's Chelsea Market stage.

Frog, played by director Ilich Guardiola in snazzy green and brown shoes, prods, pesters and pumps up his best friend. Toad, played by Kregg Alan Dailey, adds a bit of hysteria to their adventures.

Five cousins and their handlers, grandparents Woody and Esther Fox of Houston and Leslie Tjarks of Denver, seated in Section 3's Row D, agreed Friday evening's performance was really fun.

• Abby Mangham of Denver said Toad was her favorite, but the 11-year-old also liked Snail's big scene. Snail (played by Kyle Greer) is given the important mission of delivering a letter. Snail spends most of the night slowly wandering — he thinks he's speeding along — in different directions. His spotlight moment is I'm Coming Out of My Shell.

• Ryan Brandt, 10, of Houston, said her favorite portion was the Christmas scene in which Toad decides Frog is late. Worried that his friend is in peril, Toad plots how he will save Frog with his rescue equipment: a lamp, rope and frying pan.

• Tyler Cohen, 8, of Houston, remembers Toad's impatience with gardening from the books, which he said he hasn't read in years. Toad dons a tutu to perform an interpretive dance and blows a tuba to make the flowers grow.

• Five-year-old Clay Cohen, of Houston, said he laughed the most at Snail and treated us to an impression of a snail running. Other kids were trying out the snail shuffle during the production's intermission.

• Morgan Brandt of Houston, 4 1/2 , echoed Ryan's favorites, but she didn't like Large and Terrible Frog, central to Frog's spooky story for a dark and stormy night. LTF is three humans wide with scary eyes and wide mouth. Morgan wanted to know how they made LTF talk.

I couldn't say, but kids can ask Frog and Toad after the show when the cast signs autographs and poses for photos in the lobby.